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A whole lot has changed today. Not only did I get the site updated from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7, but I added a lot of functionality that should make it a more friendly forum experience. And the new theme (the visual appearance) is supposedly mobile friendly.

The forums used to look just like some plain tables, but now they look much more like a modern forum that people expect. I added private messaging and email notifications (i.e. following or subscribing to a forum thread), which I find highly useful myself.

We haven't done much with this site in a long time, but we recently realized it can still have a purpose. You see, Shire Silver is not just a particular brand of innovative bullion, but its also the model used to create that brand's products. Since the model has been placed in the public domain, and others have used it in similar forms, we figured this might be a good place to have free and open discussions of not only the model, but all kinds of related topics.

I just ordered the first shipment of silver source material to use for the first round of testing. With the price of silver in FRNs being near a year low at around $11/ounce, now is probably a great time to buy.
However, this source for the milled silver has a markup of over 40% above spot. I think its worth it, just to be sure of the quality. There's also additional charges for shipping, so the markup is approximately 50%. Hopefully the markup will be lower for larger orders.

This morning I finally got around to doing the first round of testing, using copper as a cheaper analog to silver. While it does show that just using a hammer won't be enough, it does indicate that we're on the right track.

Hammer: AKA mini-sledge.Hammer Results: The result of using the prototype die with the hammer.Sledge: The sledge hammer.Sledge Results: The results of using the sledge hammer on the prototype die.

Because I log on to this site using an account with all permissions, I see everything. I see stuff that hasn't been approved yet. Thus I didn't notice that several of you have commented on things and the comments aren't showing up for everyone.

I have commenting set so that "regular" users can write comments, but they need to be approved before they can be seen by others. This is very useful in preventing spam, and creates a list of comments needing approval. However, I had forgotten, and hadn't been checking the approval list. This has been going on for months. Sorry.

This is just a friendly reminder that the Shire Silver Design Contest deadline is just over a month away. We haven't received as many submissions as we would like, and none of them so far meet the specified criteria. Please consider entering your own design.

Nevada, by the way, is known as the Silver State for a reason-its great mining industry produced the precious metal for the beautiful silver dollars minted at the fabled Carson City mint. These constitutional coins, include .775 ounces of silver, in accord with the Coinage Act of 1792. Today these coins, worth $1 in my father's day, have about $14 in silver. That is, the dollar is worth 1/14th of what it was, thanks to the counterfeiting Federal Reserve.

The Fed has again taken our country into a terrible crisis. Who else is talking about honest money that cannot be printed up at will by DC bureaucrats? My opponents in both parties are all some variety of print-and-spend Keynesians. Only we are telling the truth, about who is to blame for this recession, and how we can build real prosperity with sound money, no IRS, no deficit, and strict obedience to the Constitution. And, of course, no hyper-expensive, hyper-dangerous empire all around the globe.

Madame Speaker, I rise to introduce the Free Competition in Currency Act. This act would eliminate two sections of US Code that, although ostensibly intended to punish counterfeiters, have instead been used by the government to shut down private mints. As anti-counterfeiting measures, these sections are superfluous, as 18 USC 485, 490, and 491 already grant sufficient authority to punish counterfeiters.

The two sections this bill repeals, 18 USC 486 and 489, are so broadly written as to effectively restrict any form of private coinage from competing with the products of the United States Mint. Allowing such statutes to remain in force as a catch-all provision merely encourages prosecutorial abuse. One particular egregious recent example is that of the Liberty DollarEmphasis Added, in which federal agents seized millions of dollars worth of private currency held by a private mint on behalf of thousands of people across the country.